Could Accelerated Long-Term Forgetting Be a Feature of the Higher Rate of Memory Complaints Associated with Subjective Cognitive Decline? An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Background: Recently, subjective cognitive decline (SCD) was proposed as an early risk factor for future Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Objective: In this study, we investigated whether accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF), assessed with extended testing intervals than those adopted in clinical practice, might be a cognitive feature of SCD. Using an explorative MRI analysis of the SCD sample, we attempted to investigate the areas most likely involved in the ALF pattern. Methods: We recruited 31 individuals with SCD from our memory clinic and subdivided them based on their rate of memory complaints into mild SCDs (n = 18) and severe SCDs (n = 13). A long-term forgetting procedure, involving the recall of verbal and visuo-spatial material at four testing delays (i.e., immediate, 30 min, 24 h, and 7 days post-encoding) was used to compare the two sub-groups of SCDs with a healthy control group (HC; n = 16). Results: No significant between-group difference was found on the standard neuropsychological tests, nor in the immediate and 30 min recall of the experimental procedure. By contrast, on the verbal test severe SCDs forgot significantly more than HCs in the prolonged intervals (i.e., 24 h and 7 days), with the greatest decline between 30 min and 24 h. Finally, in the whole SCD sample, we found significant associations between functional connectivity values within some cortical networks involved in memory (default mode network, salience network, and fronto-parietal network) and verbal long-term measures. Conclusions: Our preliminary findings suggest that long-term forgetting procedures could be a sensitive neuropsychological tool for detecting memory concerns in SCDs, contributing to early AD detection.